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jack_babalonIn the end they buried you alive in a grave they dug for your song, leaving behind a blank tombstone to baffle your ghost as each man walked backwards - slowly, quietly - into the footsteps that had led them into your life.
Later they would drag each memory they had of you out of the palace of lost beds, bars and parties you once shared. They lined each one down a long gray wall and held a trial. Your laugh was evidence of their worse suspiscions, for your laugh came where they expected tears. Your kiss was found counterfeit as well - a golden crown not meant for any single king to wear and therefore treacherous. They found witnesses to testify to your madness - how you masturbated to pictures of full moons, would line your panties with red petals as a substitute for tampons, days spent calling out sick from work to re-read Ray Bradbury novels, taking showers on the roof when it rained, how you often sat naked in front of your notebooks scribbling poetry they could not read, how you painted murals on the apartment windows before breaking them open with your fists, how you secretly trained your cats to spy and murder at your command...
Most of all though it was your song that had hurt them the worst: In it's melody were parts of them that they recognized but could not understand. In it's rhythm was a beast that both freightened and seduced them, forcing each one to dance awkwardly under its spell. Worst of all the song played from a place they could never claim - a distant land where the forests always burned under a perpetual night and the sea's ran red with the blood of your love. A kingdom that could never come.
There was nothing left for the court but pronounce the verdict, douse your memories in bourbon and light the match.
Yet all these years later and each man, in confidence, swears to me that you are still alive!
They claim that they can still hear your music. It haunts them at the edge of dreams... even in the depths of that deep sleep found only in the arms of a satisfied lover. On hot summer nights, when the wind hangs dead in the trees and the heat has even the shadows sweating, they say your name... under their breath, their wishes, their moans. They see you over their shoulders where devils or angels should be, in crowds masquerading as a stranger, from the window of a passing bus, on TV all the time...
One even went so far as to find your grave recently. He was drunk brave and stagger lonely and it took him several hours to remember where they buried you but at last he stumbled upon it by luck or the lack of it. He spent the rest of the night digging before the blank tombstone with the song growing louder with each layer he scraped away with his fingers, until at last he reached the bottom and found you were not there.
Maybe you never were.
Maybe you were here all along.
Later they would drag each memory they had of you out of the palace of lost beds, bars and parties you once shared. They lined each one down a long gray wall and held a trial. Your laugh was evidence of their worse suspiscions, for your laugh came where they expected tears. Your kiss was found counterfeit as well - a golden crown not meant for any single king to wear and therefore treacherous. They found witnesses to testify to your madness - how you masturbated to pictures of full moons, would line your panties with red petals as a substitute for tampons, days spent calling out sick from work to re-read Ray Bradbury novels, taking showers on the roof when it rained, how you often sat naked in front of your notebooks scribbling poetry they could not read, how you painted murals on the apartment windows before breaking them open with your fists, how you secretly trained your cats to spy and murder at your command...
Most of all though it was your song that had hurt them the worst: In it's melody were parts of them that they recognized but could not understand. In it's rhythm was a beast that both freightened and seduced them, forcing each one to dance awkwardly under its spell. Worst of all the song played from a place they could never claim - a distant land where the forests always burned under a perpetual night and the sea's ran red with the blood of your love. A kingdom that could never come.
There was nothing left for the court but pronounce the verdict, douse your memories in bourbon and light the match.
Yet all these years later and each man, in confidence, swears to me that you are still alive!
They claim that they can still hear your music. It haunts them at the edge of dreams... even in the depths of that deep sleep found only in the arms of a satisfied lover. On hot summer nights, when the wind hangs dead in the trees and the heat has even the shadows sweating, they say your name... under their breath, their wishes, their moans. They see you over their shoulders where devils or angels should be, in crowds masquerading as a stranger, from the window of a passing bus, on TV all the time...
One even went so far as to find your grave recently. He was drunk brave and stagger lonely and it took him several hours to remember where they buried you but at last he stumbled upon it by luck or the lack of it. He spent the rest of the night digging before the blank tombstone with the song growing louder with each layer he scraped away with his fingers, until at last he reached the bottom and found you were not there.
Maybe you never were.
Maybe you were here all along.
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no subject
on 2008-07-27 09:57 am (UTC)feels like a dream.
the first line
is so evocative and musical...
no subject
on 2008-07-28 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-07-28 04:38 pm (UTC)now that you say it,
i do get that cohen influence.
still, lovely and lyrical...